Less Crazy

Ok an explanation of yesterday's post.

Loki is bonkers. Or at least he was last night. When I got home from work he was in lovely Snuggle Mode, all cuddly and purring. Within an hour he had switched to Kill Mode, scratching, biting, actually drawing blood. Ok that's a lie but he was off his head. We had to resort to tiring him out by throwing a mouse round the room for about an hour. Eventually he settled down, but I really thought I had bitten off more than I could cope with. However it seems that this is pretty normal kitten behaviour. Oh my god. How long for?

Actually he's being pretty normal today, I think yesterday was just revenge for leaving him at home alone all day for the first time. At the moment he is sitting on the top of the stairs watching us while Neighbours is on. To be honest that's probably very wise, to be shielded from most of the horror of Ramsey Street.

So slowly he's becoming part of the family. But if you ever hear me call myself "Daddy", or introduce you to him as "Uncle" or "Auntie" then just shoot me. Seriously.

Uh Oh

I think I've adopted a nutcase.

Meet the New Lodger

OK, I was going to say new member of the family, but, as many of you know, that sort of thing just makes me roll my eyes. It's an animal, not a person.

Anyway here he is:

He looks a bit mad but he is in a horrible animal shelter at the moment. Actually it's lovely there, the Cat Haven, they do a great job trying to re-home all those poor moggies that get dumped. Give them some money.

His name is Lucky, but as that is the lamest rescue cat name ever thought of I've decided to change it to Loki, Norse god of mischief, deception, murder (and air for some reason). Pretty appropriate for a cat I think. He came with all his equipment too, which was a bit sad. Obviously his last owners just couldn't keep him and surrendered him and his basket, litter tray and favourite cat toy. If he ever gets on Australian Idol he'll have a great back story.

I have to go pick him up tomorrow after he's been...well, you know, best not mentioned really. So from now on I have responsibilities, and need cat sitters, and vet bills, and faeces removal apparatus.

The joy of parenthood...damn! I did it already.

Låt den rätte komma in

Just been to see Let the right one in, the brilliant Swedish, pre-pubescent vampire movie.

The film was was great but once again the rest of the audience needed a slap. Arriving late, talking, rustling, chewing, talking some more.

God other people shit me.

DIY or GSETDI

I've been painting the house over the last few days and decided that it really is better to not Do It Yourself but Get Someone else To Do It. I don't mean to imply that I am bad at DIY, or even that I am too lazy to do it myself, it's more about standards. I am pretty fussy about detail and finish on things and when you have a tradesman painting or building then you can say to them if it's not up to scratch. However when you do it yourself, and it looks a bit shit, then you only have yourself to blame.

For example I had some new doors put on. I did try to do this myself, but after three hours of trimming the width and height, measuring and rebating the hinges and rebating the latch I managed to cut the hole for the handle in the wrong place and thereby ruin the whole bloody thing. That was the end of that: the door and my enthusiasm for doing it again. So I got a chippy in to put on some doors, which was expensive but worth it as at least they fit and all the holes are in the right place.

Anyway all I had to do was paint these doors. Now this is not particularly hard you'd think, just slap on a bit of gloss. But no matter how I do it, with a foam roller, with a mohair roller, with a brush, it just looks bloody awful. All streaky and drippy. Just not up to my standards, but I have no-one to blame sadly. So I've decided to just give up and try not to look at them. Hopefully I'll be motivated to have another go at some point in the future. Or better still get my dad to do them when he visits next. It's the same with the walls, getting the edges right is a nightmare. To be honest I am a bit better at this, but trying to cut in the walls at the top of the stairwell was just impossible, I've had to do it with a paint pad on a really long pole as I have no scaffolding. Again it just looks terrible and I can only blame myself. Or possibly the architect in this situation.

Hey ho. All part of the fun of being a home owner I suppose. At the moment I'm having a break from paint and brushes. This is to give me time to find all the splatters and wipe them up/sand them off the floors and walls. What fun.

I'm back

So I'm not dead. Just had some major internet issues. I was off line for almost three weeks and it was awful! Well intermittently off-line, then on-line, then off-line. Then slow. Then fast. Then not working at all.

OK so it might not be the end of the world but it's amazing how you miss the web access when you don't have it. I mean I couldn't even check the TV schedules. I was reliant on the old iPhone which was fine except I can't get 3G in the house so it was a bit slow.

The process of getting it fixed was a nightmare. First I had dozens of calls to the help desk at Amcom who were great but insisted that there was nothing wrong. Then they suggested that my modem might be on the blink and could I drop it in for "testing" and repair. What is this the 30s? Are they going to change a valve or something? Anyway I took it in and they said it was all ok. So I got it home and it didn't work. So I took it back and they gave me a new modem, got it home and it didn't work.

At this point I was getting really annoyed. I also noticed that the phone line was really crackling. Ahhaa! Maybe it's Telstra's fault. So I called them and indeed I did have a fault on my line. An open circuit apparently. Whatever that is. So they arranged for the Telstra man to come to the house and check it out.

He came and it was all working, then he left and it wasn't.

So now I'm really annoyed, so I call Telstra again and they tell me that the engineer has checked from the exchange to my MDB (apparently if you are in a block of units there is only one line in and Telstra's responsibility only goes to this, after that they charge you, how kind) and everything is OK. Even though it isn't. So I arrange for a new visit from the Telstra man. I have to be in from 1 to 5 pm. Beck waited in and he arrived at 12.45. It turns out there was a dodgy solder in the MBD which was causing the issues. So much for the first idiot who turned up.

So at last I got the thing working. I can't believe it took three weeks just to fix an internet connection and all it was was a bad solder. Talk about for the want of a nail the shoe was lost.

Maybe the new fibre-optic national broadband network will be more reliable. Even if it is going to be filtered almost to a standstill.

Anyway I'm back now, and I've got a few things to rant about in the next week or so.